FAQs about Charts/Sales/Certifications

There are many recurring questions/misunderstandings when it comes to charts/sales/certifications and I hope that new members/members will read this thread and it will dispell all the recurring questions/misunderstandings about the subject.

I have talked to another moderator (matthew_dixon) and he also thinks this is a good idea, so I'll be making this a sticky topic.

Please feel free to participate and answer questions that people might have.

Last edited by seattleboy on Fri Jun 01, 2007 5:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Are certifications actual sales or shipments?Certifications in most countries are based on shipments to stores, counted or not by sales tracking systems (e.g. Soundscan for the US & Canada, Oricon for Japan, IFOP for France etc.) and/or record club sales.

However in the UK, since 2005 certifications have been based partly on actual in store sales, as well as shipments to the industry. This is because download sales can count towards the existing awards schemes, unlike in the US where downloads have their own certification scheme.

The problem with the UK, which the rules do not make clear, is how downloads of songs which were released pre-1989 are counted. Under current rules, songs which were released prior to 01/01/89 have to sell a higher amount to qualify for an award - unlike the US, the new award levels are not applied retrospectively. (Thanks, Robbie)

Is there a place to find worldwide sales for albums/singles?Currently, there is no organisation tracking sales on a worldwide basis. What exists, in almost every country in the world are National Recording Associations (NRA e.g. the RIAA, BPI, IFOP, IFPI, ARIA, RIAJ) which handle all matters relationed with recorded music in that country. One of those matters is the CERTIFICATION of record sales, the famous gold, platinum and more recently, diamond awards. (Thanks, Edu and Basil)

How does the certification process work?A record label has to request a certification and to pay for it. What happens next is that the label has to furnish all legal documents that can confirm the pretended sales level, and then each NRA has people who go and check if this numbers are true by checking the label accounting books, this process is known as an audition.

What is checked is the number of records SHIPPED, NOT the records actually sold (read above for different countries). The latter task is, kept track of by retail (in store) sales companys (e.g. Soundscan, Oricon, IFOP). The label itself, only controls the manufacturing and the shipment of an album/single, not the actual sales of a record. something that can eventually only happen a long time after the initial record release/shipment. (Thanks, Edu and Basil)

Is there a such thing as 'over-certified' and 'under-certified'?'Over-certification' does not exist, because retailers have to order/pay the label for albums/singles in advance. In return retailers get a portion of the money for all the albums/singles sold. If labels could just ship as many albums as they want and get paid for it, then there would be no financial problems for labels (which clearly isn't the case, looking at how labels are merging now) and retailers would be bankrupt. In many countries there are places where albums are sold, but they are not counted by sales tracking systems. Really, sales tracking systems are not completely comprehensive when it comes to album sales,yet.

'Under-certification' does exist. Artists/labels get paid for album sales even if they are not certified or updated by a National Recording Association. Certifications cost money (as mentioned above) and are really only for the media/public. Some labels like Interscope, Motown etc. don't really care to certify or update certifications of albums, but they and the artists know how much the album has really sold to date and they get paid for it.

Do Gold/Platinum/Diamond awards mean the same thing in every country?No. Certifications are based on the size of the album/singles market per country. Certification levels will go up or down based on how strong the market is.

Last edited by seattleboy on Sat Jul 14, 2007 7:31 pm, edited 9 times in total.

What is the Billboard (US) Internet Album Chart based on?It's based sales from internet retailers that are counted by Soundscan (e.g Amazon)

In the US, what are audience impressions?Audience impressions are the amount of people listening per week at all the radio stations across the country. The US Billboard singles charts are made up of airplay *and* single/digital sales, so audience impressions are used.

In Brazil, is the chart site Hot 100 Brasil official?No, it's completely fabricated.

Is the Billboard Rock Album Chart based on total sales or from sales from specialist rock music shops?Data for Billboard's sales charts -- which include all of our album charts -- are compiled by Nielsen SoundScan from a universe of merchants that represents more than 90% of the U.S. music retail market. The sample includes not only music stores and the music departments at electronics and department stores, but also direct-to-consumer transactions and Internet sales (both physical albums via Internet, and ones bought via digital downloads). A limited array of verifiable sales from concert venues is also tabulated.

All sales charts use the entire Nielsen SoundScan panel, with the exception of the R&B/Hip-Hop charts which uses a panel of core stores that specialize in the genre. The Nielsen SoundScan system utilizes that same point-of-sale that music merchants use to track their inventory, so you can think of itemized receipt from your last trip to the music store as a ballot cast for our charts. (From Billboard)

Do music video sales count towards a songs total?

In the US, music video sales from legal download outlets are not counted in a songs total and do not help a song on the Billboard charts.

Last edited by seattleboy on Sun Jul 22, 2007 7:38 pm, edited 5 times in total.

one thing to note for the UK - since 2005 certifications have been based partly on actual sales to the consumer, as well as shipments to the industry. This is because download sales can count towards the existing awards schemes, unlike in the US where downloads have their own certification scheme.

The problem with the UK, which the rules do not make clear, is how downloads of songs which were released pre-1989 are counted. Under current rules, songs which were released prior to 01/01/89 have to sell a higher amount to qualify for an award - unlike the RIAA, the new award levels were not applied retrospectively. The only exception is, if the song is rereleased after 01/01/89, then the new (current levels) apply. Now that old songs can be downloaded, the question I would like to know is, will the download be classed as a rerelease or will sales be added to the original version? If the latter, the old certification rules apply (songs released prior to 1973 do not qualify for certification at all, unless again it is a rerelease).

Edu wrote:As more and more people seems to be interested in these matters of how much of an album or single a particular artist sold, i started to see that exist, either amongst "rookies" or even in some not so "new to the business", some perpetual misconceptions and doubts about some topics regarding this (fascinating) subject of record sales..

I decided then to write this small (kind of) introduction to this world of sales, gold & platinum records, certifications, soundscan vs shippments, etc..

I hope this can give some contribution to the pleasure of finding out which are the most popular songs, albums and artists in the history of recorded music that we all share in this forum..

You can also consider this post as a kind of draft of a "frequently asked questions" regarding records sales..

1)

There is NO organisation tracking sales on a worldwide basis. What exists, in almost all countries of the world, is NATIONAL organisations, which i shall call National Record Associations (NRA) which handle all matters relationed with recorded music. One of those matters is the CERTIFICATION of record sales, the famous gold, platinum and more recently, diamond awards.

2) But attention! These NRA don't count the sales on the retailers! There are private enterprises who do that job (example: Soundscan). Unfortunately the weekly and up-to-date all time results of this continuous data research is not available to the general public, being the exception the Japanese market (am i right Mario?). Only through articles on the press (example: Billboard), or through ads or press releases from the labels themselves can these numbers be at the disposal of anyone who is interested. In the case of Soundscan a person can pay a fee and have access to this data but the fee is so high that generally only people inside the music industry can access it. This data is then given to other organisation, not necessarily the NRA of that country, which makes public what we call the charts.

3) What the local NRA do that really interest us is the CERTIFICATION process (or accreditations like they are called in Australia). But attention! The sales of any album or single are NOT automatically certified by each NRA. For that to happen the label has to request a certification and to pay for it. What happens next is that the label has to furnish all legal documents that can confirm the pretended sales level, and then each NRA has people who go and check if this numbers are true by checking the label accounting books, this process is known as an audition. What is checked is the number of records SHIPPED to the stores, NOT the records actually sold by each retailer.This latter task is, like i said before, made by other organisations. The label, by itself, only controls the manufacturing and the shipment, not the actual sales of a record, something that can eventually only happen a long time after the initial record release/shipment. Only after being proved the authenticy of the data presented by the label is then emmited an official award to certify a particular sales (= shipment) level.

4) The main problem in certifying a record, especially records from the 70's and before, is to find those books and papers where can be seen how much of a particular record was shipped. Because many times in the old days things were not so professional as today, many times this search for documentation can take years (example: what BMG is still doing today regarding USA sales for Elvis Presley). And to check thousands of papers can really be a slow task. Nowdays that is not so difficult, and even catalog sales in the last 20 years are being tracked by the labels. So, the labels ALWAYS know how much of a record was shipped. And they never exaggerate those numbers. Why? Because they have to pay royalties to the artists, producers, musicians, etc. So if a label says a certain amount was shipped, it has to give a check with an amount of money proportional to those sales. So, what can happen is a label to say that a record sold LESS than the real number, in order to pay less to the persons involved on the record. This happens, and especially in the old times (70's and before) this happened a lot (example: Meat Loaf vs. Epic regarding "Bat Out Of Hell" sales).

Edu wrote:5) There is a very interesting example of this opening of old (and dusty?) accounting books. It's about John Denver american sales. Till 1999, John had 9.75 million album sales certified by RIAA. After several emails of a big fan of him to persons on the RCA label, he received one saying that they would start searching for old documents in order to discover how much John had sold in US till the present time. Well, the time passed by and when it seems that it had been just an empty promise a surprise happened (sadly John had already passed away)..in May of 2001, almost two years after the promise of RCA (made by the same man who started the still ongoing process of the upgrade of all Elvis Presley sales), all the back catalog of John was actualized by the addition of 20.5 million album sales (including more 8.5 million unexpected sales for his "Greatest Hits" album). So, from less than 10 million John jumped to more than 30 million. This is a prime example of how much artists sales are still "hidden" on some offices. So, when we look at RIAA we have to keep in mind that many sales are still not seeing the light of day on their database, big examples being Stevie Wonder, still Elvis Presley, also the Beatles and all Motown artists roster of the 60's and 70's. Also recently, to the surprise of many people, the Queen catalog sales was open by their new American label and many millions suddenly appeared , leaded by the jump of 6 million in their first "Greatest Hits". Why some labels don't upgraded sales can be due to many reasons, from fear of paying unpaid royalties to sheer lazyness. Depends of the persons that can take this kind of decisions. I believe that in near future each time more and more information about past sales will see the light of day, either in USA and outside. For instance, Warner upgraded many records on their catalog in France as recently as 2001, and now it seems will do the same in the UK. Also many NRA are constructing databases, examples being the NRA of Canada, France, Brazil and Australia. Soon we all will have a lot to discuss about. But remember, it's always in the hands of the labels the truth about sales, certifications depend totally of them.

6) It's necessary to be very careful when analysing sales data. Many times, too many times, journalists that aren't aware of the rules of certifications write things that are afterwards read by fans and then start to become a kind of fact even being not true. One prime example is that many Beatles fans think that the "White Album" is the best-selling album of The Beatles in the USA because the media says that it sold 19 million in America. What the journalist was not careful enough to check (and the fan likewise) was what is the meaning of a Platinum award for a double-album released in 1968..well, according to the RIAA, every double, or triple, or multi-disc album, released before 1982 (why 1982? because it was the year when the first commercial CD's were avalaible to the public), independently of its time lenght, has each individual CD on it counted as one unit toward certification. So, in reality "The White Album" sold 9.5 million copies (what is translated in 19xPlatinum by RIAA rules) and not 19 million copies. The same example in the press is the Pink Floyd's album "The Wall", cited as a 23 million seller instead of a 11.5 million seller DOUBLE album..The prime example on the singles side is the "We Are The World" single. When it was certified, back in 1985, the rule for a Platinum single was 2 (two) million units shipped, so 4 x Platinum means 4 x (2 million units shipped) = 8 million units shipped and NOT 4 million.

People cannot assume that Platinum means million, that depend of what kind of record we are talking about and the rules when the record was certified. The same problem happens with box-sets certifications. Many people believe that Springsteen's "Live 1975-85" 3-CD or 5-LP box set sold 13 million!!! Such thing could never be possible, it sold more than 4.3 million sets, and 13 million comes from multiplying 4.3 million times 3 CD for each set. The figure of 4.3 million for a 3-CD set is already exceptional enough. This rule (which started in 1991 and was improved in 1992) was made to call attention to the box-set market that was in expansion. But when we talk about certifications in the UK we don't need to worry, independently of the number of CDs inside an "album", each "album" is counted only once for certifications, so in the UK we translate awards directly to sales unlike in the USA. But attention, in many markets of the world, rules were changed some time ago, prime examples being the German and Brazilian certifications. So we always need to know the certification date in order to know how much sales the award represents..

Edu wrote:7) Many times, more often than people think, labels give personalized awards to the persons involved on a record. This awards are called "in-the-house" awards and they most of the times refer to worldwide sales. Once i saw personally on a record shop a 12-million global sales award for Bon Jovi's "Cross Road", a award that included the individual sales in each country of the world where that album had achieved a sales certification! So, the information is out there and what i think we are trying to do is to find it...Each artist, if he wants, also knows how much of each record he did sell, because he knows his/her royalty percentage and everytime it gets a new royalty check its only necessary to make the division (if he doesn't wish instead to simply ask the label..), and don't forget that artists have people working for them that check everything that they should receive from the label..And don't forget labels have to make profit, so they need to know what a record sells and where in order to know how much money they are doing. If someone in a high position inside a label wants to know how much a record sold that information is put together from all over the world and given to him. When a label wants to make any sugestion to an artist regarding promotion of a new record can also inform the artist where are his/her strongest markets using data about any particular country in the world. EMI for instance, in the last 4 years, made public his list of best-selling global albums, that's the reason we can be sure that "1" from the Beatles sold 28 million copies, and you can't be sure that McCartney staff checked if he received what is due to 28 million albums times his royalties as a songwriter and member of the band. EMI doesn't made up 28 millions because after a few days has to pay for those 28 million sales...

8) Certifications given after a certain amount of time after the record initial release date can be considered equivalent to actual all-time record sales, because there is no shop, after some months or years of having a particular record in stock, which will order more copies without having sold the ones previously ordered. If "Dark Side Of The Moon" shipped 18 million in USA presently its because it sold almost that number already, nobody orders again "Dark Side", a album already 30 years old, if it has still any copy in stock, if the retailer keeps ordering it it's because people still want to buy it..shops don't buy CD's to give profit to labels...

Summary

1) labels, and only labels, know the full picture regarding album sales, worldwide 2) some artists, veterans especially, and with good lawyers, also know the full story 3) National Associations certify sales based on the documents presented by labels, at their (labels) request, by doing an audit on the label accounting books. Both the research of documents by the label (especially decades old ones) and the audit can take some time 4) No global organisation certifies albums sales, the closest to this concept of global certification is the European IFPI with their Platinum Europe awards, which started in 1996 and are presented only to albums released in 1994 or afterwards (i'm waiting that they change this rule and permit any album, independently of its release date, to be certified..that would be fantastic!) 5) It's always necessary to know the rules of certification for each country and the certification date for each award, in order to know the actual units shipped 6) we can trust that 2 years or older certifications give us an actual ideia and very precise ideia of the number of copies a record sold in its commercial life till the present time

On the Billboard Hot 100, the new chart date is September 8, 2007. Last week's was September 1, 2007. If I wanted to know which song was officially considered #1 on say, September 3rd, which one would it be?

illmaceyougood wrote:On the Billboard Hot 100, the new chart date is September 8, 2007. Last week's was September 1, 2007. If I wanted to know which song was officially considered #1 on say, September 3rd, which one would it be?

Does this week's chart cover Sept. 2-8 or 8-14?

Billboard sales dates are as follows.

Assume that the first sales day is Day 1. Days 1-7 are used to compile the chart that will be eventually called Week Ending the whatever. Day 7 is the final day of the chart sales. This is the Sunday (I think!). Day 8 and 9 are taken to compile the chart. This is Monday and Tuesday. Day 10-12 (Wed-Fri) has the chart announced on websites, etc. The chart is dated Week Ending Day 21.

So, the sales period for the chart for week ending 8 January is actually the Christmas period sales week.

The 8 Sept chart announced today/Yesterday is for the period 20-26 August.

Title1 in the above examples is the first track on certain format (CD1Track1, etc).
Date1 is earlier than Date2, etc.

Anyway, each re-release or re-mix had its own chart run. Except maybe for some special cases as the 1988 re-mix of Phil Collins' In the Air Tonight which had been released with the same cat.no. as the original.

What about now?
Take Luciano Pavarotti and his NESSUN DORMA for example. There are at least 10 versions of this track on iTunes. And I believe they all will be combined for ONE chart entry at the end of the week. Various versions! Some of them in fact are RE-RECORDINGS!

The question is this. Will there be no re-mixes anymore in the charts, only re-entries?
Once the single had been released in the past, all the subsequent releases will count to the ONE chart run?

And how about the example I had posted. When the certain Track1 returns as a download, and we had on the way:
- Entry1
- Entry2 - re-entry
- Entry3 - remix
- Entry4 - download (combined Entry1, Entry3, Entry4, where Entry4 is another version, etc).

In The Air Tonight is excatly like this. One of the formats on iTunes UK is 1988 RE-MIX!
I don't know if all the versions have the same download signature, ie. GBAAA8100214, or not. Probably the same. Shall we link the download entry to the 1981 original or combine ALL the runs into the one. As ChartsPlus are doing at the moment, aren't they?

What do you think? What kind of chart methodology we will find in the 2008 edition of former Guinness Chart Book?